Ontario Cleans Its Hands Of Coal  

Cleantechnica has an encouraging report from Canada - Ontario Cleans Its Hands Of Coal.

The Ontario government announced on Friday that it will introduce legislation next week to ban the burning of coal and the building of new coal plants. The Canadian province expects to have completely outgrown coal by 2014, thanks to a combination of efficiency, nuclear, natural gas and an ambitious renewables program – and to save C$4.4 billion per year (US $4.2 billion) in “externalities” like health costs, from having done so. Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/25/ontario-cleans-hands-coal/#d2tMrPePLzIp2Tfg.99

RNE reports that a huge coal mine planned for Central Queensland is continuing to be heckled by doubters - Galilee Basin coal struggles against high debt and falling markets.

Queensland Resources Council chief, Michael Roche – who at a Monday press conference described a “perfect storm of a collapse in coal prices, a stubbornly high Australian dollar and very high costs – has questioned Greenpeace’s motivations, as well as its position “to make a call on whether it’s a good time or not a good time to be investing in a new coal mine.”

But as Greenpeace’s Julien Vincent and Erland Howard noted in RenewEconomy last month, they are not the only ones. “Investment banks and analysts such as Macquarie, who have been close to companies pursuing coal projects in the Galilee Basin have described the chances of the Galilee being opened up to coal mining as ‘increasingly remote’.”

Matthew Trivet, a coal market analyst at stockbrokers Patersons, agrees. “In the thermal market, it’s going to be quite difficult to see a lot of these greenfield or peripheral basins coming on line,” he told ABC’s Lateline. “You are going to need significantly higher prices to justify the huge amount of [capital expenditure] and the long lead times.”